It is in Australia if the property is declared as an investment and contribute towards retirement. It is call negative gearing, that is the difference between loan repayment and rental returns lower your taxable income.
I see, but that's not quite like the US where I believe the interest on home purchase loans were tax deductible.I don't know whether that's a good thing as there would be less incentive to pay the loan back as quickly as possible and might even inflate the house price.
So the system in Australia allows the first home purchaser to designate the first home/apartment purchase as an investment.and then rent it to himself.and then when he sells it, they pay the taxes on the capital gain?
In NZ we currently allow negative gearing and we have no capital gain tax.
However the labour party claim negative gearing contributes to high house prices and if they win the next election they will do away with it.